


The Things They Carried

by ShadowsOffense



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Lists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsOffense/pseuds/ShadowsOffense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A list of the things Hawke and company carried, format based off the classic novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things They Carried

Merrill carries her staff, the twine Varric gave her, a sack of potions, dried herbs, and powdered lyrium, and several pebbles she thought were pretty. She carries all the stories of her people and the little bits of forgotten lore she’s managed to recover from the demon, but nobody will let her share. She carries a responsibility to her clan she could never quite live up to, but can’t quiet put down either, though she’s taken up a greater duty to the People as a whole. She carries hope and faith and joy that this will somehow all be for something.

Anders carries nothing, now. Once, once he thought he carried Justice around inside him, but more and more Justice started to carry him. When Anders used to carry things, things Justice now carries, he carried the name he was given at the Circle to replace the one they stole from his memory because the Templars that took him never asked and never cared. He carried the weight of Templar eyes watching and judging, the knowledge of friends that disappeared in the night never to return, and the way the doors never opened but third story windows sometimes did. Anders thinks he once carried other things, besides the pain, but he dropped them or Justice never picked them up. Neither of them carries the mages’ cause; it has always, always carried them and now it carries everything else and he and Justice have both been swept away in its flood.

Fenris carries the lyrium etched on his skin and the memory of shackles around his wrists. He also carries the weight of his sword and the strength of will to say “no” and have it mean something. He carries a fear of mages he can never quite acknowledge as anything other than hate. And he carries a loyalty to his friends he’d rather not acknowledge because he fears it might trap him the way that his loyalty to his family once did.

Aveline carries her duty. She carries her sword, armor, and shield. She carries the lives of her men and her companions. She doesn’t carry more than she can bare and she doesn’t carry any less either. And she knows how to share her burdens.

Varric carries his words, all the stories he’s ever told, both false and true. He carries their weight and their results and he likes to think about the taverns and the laughter that go along with the best of them, but he thinks about the tears and the blood too; the things he’s covered up and the secrets he’ll never voice. Varric carries Bianca. He carries his responsibilities to his friends and house. He carries his honor, but not at the cost of doing the right thing.

Isabela carries daggers, some more inventively placed than others. She carries a deck of cards and several pieces of shiny that weren’t hers a moment ago and won’t be hers a moment later. She carries the movement of a ship in the stride of her step and a bare place on her ring finger. Isabela carries a canny wariness behind her eyes and a suggestive tilt to her smile no matter the occasion. She doesn’t like to carry much, but she carries more of her past and her friends than she knows.

Sebastian carries his choices, those he has made and those he has yet to. The wild choices of his youth, the choice of faith, the choice of revenge. His past decisions rest on him, invisible and immutable, but, though he bares them still, his past is not what weighs him down. What bends him is carrying the knowledge that he must chose between two futures, two burdens. He carries his family bow and his armor and the face of Andraste on his belt, but invisibly stoops the burden of deciding who he will be, Brother or Lord, and dreads setting the possibility of either down for the reality of only one. 

Hawke carries her father’s magic and her mother’s nose. She carries her family name because she’s the only one left to do so. She carries the hopes of people she’s never met and doesn’t care to, but, like the title they gave her, it is not something that’s hers to put down. Hawke carries how she was raised, when no one carried any more than they could run away with. Perhaps this is why Hawke still carries everything she carried in Kirkwall, even the things she’d rather not.


End file.
